Community

Ultimately, Agreements are a collective wish we make about how we might be in the same space together. That space could be a classroom, a sports team, a club, a conference, committees or boards, an organizing group. They reflect what we need to participate while feeling joyful, trusted, and brave.

But they also can be flimsy as hell.

There are always going to be people who believe they don’t really need to depend on others, or want others to depend on them. And capitalism has produced more and more ways we can use money, rather than relationships, to solve our problems. It’s easier and easier to employ a courier, a therapist, a zero-hours contracted task-doer, rather than ask a... See more

The hard truth is that no one gets to be in community without effort.

From the return of co-living spurred on by the increasingly realized benefit of living close to friends and family, to the growing presence of grassroots community initiatives like Neighborhood Trade School, mutual aid fridges, and community gardens, it’s clear that we’ve begun to recognize the potency of solving problems with collective solutions... See more

Humans have always known we cannot survive alone, and that to protect ourselves, we need to persuade others to care about us. We cultivate trusting reciprocal pacts with other people – blood relatives, but also friends and neighbours - through which reassure ourselves we can both care and be cared for, if the necessity strikes. These ties can have... See more

Many people have long wondered why the Grateful Dead succeeded in creating a world of Deadheads. It turns out that’s because the people who allocated tickets understood familiar strangers. If you bought a ticket for a Grateful Dead show in Miami, they kept a record of who you were seated near. Then, if you bought a ticket for the Nashville show,... See more